Recognizing the Value of Love

Updated on September 17, 2013

Romantic Love

The Gift of Love

Don't Underestimate Love

Sometimes when men talk about the difficulties of planning their next dating move, they are showing that they might be in love, because they care so much about the woman they are dating. Men often like to think of themselves as crafty manipulators, aiming at making women fall in love with them. Often this is only an imaginative idea in their minds.

Romantic love has made such an impression on so many people's lives that we have an expression, "Love makes the world go around." True friends and loving family members will be happy to see us fall in love. The problem for many men is that they won't admit it. Some dislike even the word "love."

While some men associate love with an obligation that could add stressful decisions to their already full schedule, the opposite is true in that love clears the way of many obstacles to success. Society as a whole will be on the side of those perceived to be in love. When people are rooting for you, it's hard to fail.

Men do not have to fret over details of their next date with the woman they love because, if the man truly does love the woman, there should be no worry over whether he will choose the right or wrong activity to do on a date with her. She should be able to recognize that he cares for her and loves her. Therefore, this fact alone will make things run smoothly.

Another waste of anxiety is in the man who agonizes over whether the woman he loves will love him back. Women have a way of knowing whether a man loves them. Once they realize it, they, not he, will decide what to do about the relationship. It's like a job interview where the interviewer realizes the applicant is interested, and then has to decide whether the company wants him or not. In love, the interviewer is a woman. Since women are filled with a general sort of love, the man should feel lucky that she is directing that love toward him in particular.

Relaxing and placing the decision making into the hands of the woman would take a lot of stress away from the indecisive man who has fallen in love. Although the dating period can be uncertain, many men realize later, perhaps only after years of marriage, that from the moment they fell in love with their woman, she, and not they, held the reins to the relationship no matter how shy and helpless she may have seemed.

A man's love belongs to the woman he loves. Although such a man usually will be the more active partner in the relationship due to the great strength of emotions he's feeling, his woman usually is directing the course of their future as a couple, while the man is acting mainly out of love and losing sight of the details of careful planning.

The insecurity a man feels while first dating a woman he loves can be sensed by this woman, who normally recognizes her man's seeming lack of confidence as being instead an overly cautious approach to her because he's treating her as someone he really strongly wants to impress and therefore, he's proceeding without making any careless mistakes. This approach is typical of love.

But the stress of the dating years later may seem like only mildly uncomfortable anxieties compared with the real serious problems to be confronted later on, if and when the couple marry. In marriage, the true drama begins. Also, since the man has won his prize, he may become complacent and discount the importance of the powerful love he experienced at the beginning, which led to marriage.

Those men who have the courage and humility to admit to being in love, and to pursue the relationship to its logical conclusion in marriage, are very wise because to evade the issue, or worse yet, abandon the relationship, may lead to a very unhappy life of regret. Real love does not come very often. If we do not dare to accept and act upon the gift of love, we may live out the rest of our lives without ever again finding anything else as valuable as the love we turned our backs upon.

Too much is left out when people, even experts, attempt to describe the power of love. Although there are situations in which a Platonic love affair can exist, sometimes for many years, the usual experience involves sexual activities. While people can numb themselves to the influence this can have over their lives, by using drugs or alcohol, most people tie together the sexual experience with the mental concentration on the person they love. Not enough has been said in the media and in books or articles about the great influence a sexual experience can have over someone's life. People can get divorced, can fall into love, or can spend all their money on an addiction to sex when they have experiences that many pass off as only brief sexual encounters. However, it isn't discussed except in private with friends. Very few TV shows, movies, newspaper articles, or books will reveal the honest truth about the significance and overwhelming influence a sexual encounter can have on the life of the average person. This is one more reason why the power of love should not be underestimated.

Love Images

More About Love

Strength and courage can come from love. Wisdom shows this to have been true all through the ages of mankind. People suffer when they are away from their loved ones. But the worst suffering of all is to have no one to love. While love is most often considered to be a romantic attachment, there are many other forms of love, such as friendship or even the love of a loyal pet.

Still there are those who don't like to use the word "love" and honestly don't believe in its existence in the popular sense made famous by all the love songs and poetry. Those people are in a small minority and maybe have had experiences that have soured them. But very few people can live as if they were hermits. It's natural to want to combine with and communicate with a fellow human being on a social level, and to feel the warmth that love can bring into someone's life.

Love comes from and out of one's heart. It's isn't necessarily and intellectual thing. It's an invisible emotion that takes precedence over the more tangible things in life like money and possessions. This is why it's said often that love is "blind." It's similar to gazing accidentally toward the sunlight and being temporarily blinded. It can last a few months or years, or sometimes an entire lifetime. It seems to have a life of its own, including its own lifespan.

But love isn't a selfish thing. A good quality of love is a considerate thing in which someone doesn't want to see the loved one suffer. A selfish person might confuse love with a need of his or her own. That won't bring happiness. Only true affection for another will bring the happiness that people can know when they have been useful and helpful for another person. Who wouldn't want to be loved? Chances are good that you and everyone you know wants to be loved. It's something more sought after than money or possessions, and yet it's invisible, almost imaginary. The force that causes the planet Earth to go around also is an invisible and mysterious force. But it's powerful, just like love.